Most panorama landscape photographs are horizontal panoramas. We typically turn the camera vertically and then shoot a sequence of images while we pan horizontally. We do this to increase not just the width of the image but also the height. It gives us more resolution which means we can print larger. Sometimes the whole point of a panorama is to be able to print large because they just look stunning when printed large. There is just something about a large print.

          When I shoot this kind of panorama I do not bother to use any special panoramic equipment. I just get the tripod as level as I can without spending too much time on doing so. The software these days do such a good job at stitching the sequence together that I do not want to carry the extra weight of panorama equipment. I will state that I do pay a bit of a price sometimes for my lack of using special pano equipment in that I need to crop the image a bit because that is what happens what the camera is not really level. I have thought of buying a panning clamp because that way I can use my ball head to make my camera level in a few seconds and then use the panning clamp for panning. In this way, my panoramas will always be taken from a level platform. The reason why I have not bought one, and probably won't is because I typically want to point my camera up or down when taking landscapes. The minute you want your camera pointing up or down when shooting panos you need much more than just a panning base and a rail ... I am just not going to go there for the few occasions that I actually take panos.

          So far my panoramas have turned out just fine. However, recently while at Horseshoe Bend in Page, Arizona I needed to take a vertical panorama. I quickly learned that that is really difficult using a ball head. When I turned my camera vertical I still could not get in what I wanted to get it. I was on the edge of the cliff and had to frame the shot from all the way down in the canyon to high up into the sky because the sky had something to offer. My 16mm lens on a full frame camera still was not wide enough. I had no choice but to shoot a vertical panorama.

With the ball head you have no way of panning vertically but to loosen it, recompose facing the camera more upwards, tighten it and shoot. This needs to be repeated a number of times.

          The problem is that when you loosen the ball head it is impossible to match your previous shot in the area that you are overlapping. The camera's level does help but your camera is moving horizontally too.

          I got home with three images that I wanted to stitch together but PhotoShop was not up to the task. No matter what I tried I just could not get it right. As you can see from the image I found a way to combine the images that worked. Let me share with you what I did because you may need this technique some day.

         All three layers were brought into PhotoShop and placed on a blank image that I created to be large enough. Since the land area could not be matched for stitching I deleted all of that area from the second and third image. Therefore, the second and third image contained only the sky. The base layer contained just enough sky to work with for matching with the other images. I turned the opacity of the top layers down enough to where I could see all three layers. I then moved the top layers around to manually align them as best I could visually. Once the three layers were lined up as best as I could their opacity was restored to 100% and then I selected all three layers, clicked on "edit" and then on "auto align layers." While all three layers were still selected I clicked on "edit" again, and this time followed up by clicking on "auto blend layers." That did it. There were a few spots where it did not do a great job but those were easy to fix using either the healing brush or the clone tool.

          The layers were flattened and the image was then processed as usual. As usual, the image was taken back into camera raw when done to set the white and black points. There you have it. Don't be afraid to do it manually if you have to. Do not give up on a shot that you really want.